Inbound Marketing vs Outbound Marketing — What’s the difference, and which is better?

In marketing, there’s no shortage of marketing terms to learn. And while you may have heard the terms inbound marketing and outbound marketing — what do they really mean, and what’s the difference between them?

Well, if you’re unsure what the two are and how they differ — don’t fret; we’ve got it covered. In this article, we’ll break down each, so you understand how to use each to achieve your eCommerce business goals.

We’ll discuss the following:

Ready? Let’s get started.

What’s Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a long-term strategy of turning prospects into customers by providing useful, valuable, and engaging content at different stages of the buyer’s journey. 

Inbound marketing is also described as soft-sell marketing. So, instead of marketing to prospects in a direct manner, marketers use techniques to draw — or pull prospects in instead of hard-selling them.  

Think of inbound marketing as a magnet, where marketers use marketing strategies, tactics, and methods to attract or draw prospects to a specific product, service, or company. Inbound marketing attracts target audiences like magnets that only attract metallic objects. 

One key differentiator is that inbound marketing is not just good for the business, it’s good for prospects, too. How so?

Well, by providing helpful content that can help prospects learn about your products. For instance, how to buy, use, and maintain your products — you’re helping them save time, money, and frustration.

Think about it like this.

For instance, if you sell auto parts, you can create articles, videos, and infographics to teach prospects or customers how to install specific products onto their vehicles. Done well, this content can build trust with prospects, eventually turning them into customers.

There are four stages of inbound marketing:

Awareness – Attract Prospects

In the first stage of inbound marketing — awareness — the goal is to generate attention from prospects in your target audience. Here, you will create content that pulls prospects in. Blogs, videos, infographics, and podcasts are great at this stage. 

Conversion – Convert Prospects into Customers

In the second stage of inbound marketing, the goal is to convert the prospect into a customer using conversion tactics, including PPC and social media ads, lead-gen forms, landing pages, etc., showing them why they should do business with you. 

Nurture – Nurture and Grow the Relationship

In this stage of inbound marketing, you will try to establish and solidify a relationship with prospective customers through email marketing promotions, for instance. Lead nurturing is a long-term strategy that, if done right, should lead to customer loyalty.

Loyalty – Wow Customers to Keep Them Loyal

Established customers — especially loyal ones — are more profitable than new customers. But how do you create loyal customers? Wow and delight them with exceptional customer experience and high-quality products. Create a brag-worthy customer experience to generate valuable social proof like reviews, ratings, and word-of-mouth marketing. 

There are many types of inbound marketing content, including:

• Content Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media Marketing
• Pay-Per-Click Ads
• Affiliate Marketing
• E-books
• Video
• Audio
• Articles and Blogs
• Webinars 
• Podcasts
• Infographics
• Opt-in Email Marketing
• Newsletters

and more.

Examples of Inbound Marketing:

Content Marketing:

Strategically create and distribute valuable, relevant, timely, and consistent content to attract and retain prospective customers. 

Examples: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, brand awareness, and blogging, etc.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Creating content strategically optimized for specific keywords that helps customers find your products, services, and website using search engines is the primary goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Examples: Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Amazon

Interested in creating an SEO strategy for your business? Contact us to rank higher in Google.

Social Media Marketing:

The strategy of promoting useful, engaging, and entertaining platform-specific content to prospects and customers on social media sites. 

Examples: Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok. 

Done right, inbound marketing should engage, educate, and entertain your audience.

The Advantages of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing has many advantages; here are a few:

High-Quality Traffic and Leads

Generate high-quality traffic and leads with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Get exceptional results by understanding your customers and performing solid keyword research. 

Cost-Effective

Compared to other types of marketing, inbound marketing can be highly cost-effective, especially when leveraging owned media (company website, email newsletter, and blogs) and earned media (any unsolicited third-party writeups like publicity)—since these aren’t paid for. 

Long-Lasting Results

Creating content is one of the most effective inbound marketing strategies—and it can have long-lasting results. A piece of content, like a YouTube video, an infographic, or a blog, can generate leads and traffic for years to come. 

The Disadvantages of Inbound Marketing

Some find the following to be disadvantages of inbound marketing:

ROI Time

Inbound marketing is a long-term strategy. On average, it can take six months or more to see results. Some companies will see results faster, some longer. Success will depend on many variables, including content quality, quantity, frequency, and consistency. 

Significant Resource Involvement

While inbound marketing might be cost-effective, it still has associated costs. For instance, even though you’re using in-house writers and designers to create blog posts and infographics, you still must attribute their salaries to inbound marketing. Also, there might be long turnaround times if these are shared resources. 

Too Many Options, Channels, and Strategies

Having too many options can be just as bad, if not worse, than having not enough—especially in inbound marketing. To be effective and consistent, choose 1-3 types of content and 1-3 channels to start. You can expand as you get comfortable and get the desired results. 

6 Effective Strategies for Inbound Marketing

Effective inbound marketing strategies are well planned out and executed. Here are six steps to take to create highly effective inbound marketing strategies:

1. Define business goals and align inbound marketing goals

Clearly defined business goals will help you create an effective inbound marketing strategy. Once you understand the goals that are important to the business, you can align inbound marketing strategies that get the desired results.

2. Define inbound marketing target audience

Who is your target audience for your inbound marketing plan? A crystal-clear understanding of your target audience and what they want is needed to create an effective inbound marketing strategy. Create buyer personas, including demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and needs analyses.

3. Perform an inbound marketing content audit

Evaluate existing content with a content inventory; then audit each piece of content for performance based on KPIs and content attributes. Finally, identify any gaps and look for opportunities to improve performance.

4. Create content based on customer lifecycle stages

Once the business goals and target audience are clearly defined, create persona- and customer-lifecycle-based content. High-quality content developed for each stage of the customer lifecycle—reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty—can help you stand out with customers.

5. Distribute content based on the content calendar

Successful content distribution requires meticulous planning and execution—enter the content calendar. Stay organized and on top of your content distribution with channel-specific content plans. Knowing what content needs to be created and distributed by when eliminates stress and can help you achieve your inbound marketing goals. 

6. Analyze performance

To hit your performance goals, you’ll first need to analyze them. Once you know how your content overall and individually is performing, you can optimize accordingly. 

Now that we’ve discussed inbound marketing, let’s look at outbound marketing. 

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing is when companies proactively and directly initiate conversations with prospects and customers through promotions, discounts, and campaigns.

Unlike inbound marketing, outbound marketing is hard-sell marketing. Outbound marketing pushes products, services, and promotions to prospects and customers by directly marketing to prospects and customers. 

Instead of trying to be helpful to prospects and customers, outbound marketing is more company-centric, where the focus is promoting and selling products and services that are in the company’s best interest. 

Also called push marketing, outbound marketing tries to get customers to purchase within a shorter amount of time by creating a sense of urgency. For instance, a promotion will have a clearly defined end date.

Outbound marketing usually uses traditional marketing strategies, like TV commercials, cold calls, weekly circulars, coupons, or discounts. 

Here are some types of outbound marketing strategies:

• Television Commercials
• Radio Commercials
• Billboards
• Outdoor Posters and Flyers
• Digital Display Ads
• Newspaper and Magazine Ads
• Trade Shows
• Conferences 
• Networking Events (in-person and virtual)
• Cold Calling
• Cold Emailing
• Weekly Circulars/Mass Mailers

Examples of Outbound Marketing Strategies

To understand outbound marketing clearly, let’s look at some examples. While there are many strategies available to use, here are a few to get you started:

Television, Radio, and Magazine Ads:

Outbound marketing, like television and radio campaigns, is excellent for generating brand awareness. While expensive and hard to track ROI, when used strategically and with digital marketing strategies, television and radio ads can be helpful to outbound marketing strategies. 

Examples: Television commercials, radio commercials, magazine ads, display ads, advertorials

Direct Response Marketing Campaigns:

Direct Response Marketing Campaigns are designed to get immediate responses from prospects. Typically, these campaigns use direct-response copywriting—that is, copywriting that uses persuasive selling techniques to convert prospects into customers immediately. 

Examples: Sales pages, direct-response marketing campaigns, direct-response email campaigns.

Cold Calling/Cold Emails:

Contrary to belief, cold calling and cold emails are not dead. But to be effective, you must research your intended targets with valid email addresses and personalize your communications accordingly. Generic, spammy emails and calls do not work as well.

Examples: Highly personalized emails and cold calls. 

Trade Shows, Conferences, and Networking Events:

Shows and events are a great way to increase brand awareness. In-person and virtual events can be a great way to introduce prospective customers to new products and services and learn more about the company. With inbound marketing, shows and events can be a great lead-generation tool.

The Advantages of Outbound Marketing

Brand Awareness to the Masses

If brand awareness is the goal, look no further than outbound marketing. From Radio and television commercials to newspaper and magazine articles, level up your brand recognition with these outbound marketing strategies. Press releases and publicity are also great outbound marketing strategies to increase brand awareness to the masses. 

Easier Targeting and Implementation

Because you’re targeting the masses, there is no need for refined segmentation. Instead, targeting is done at a higher level, like culture, region, or profession, making outbound marketing much more accessible than an inbound marketing strategy.

Increased Sales

Since outbound marketing aims to push products and services directly to prospects and customers, increased sales are one of the most significant advantages of outbound marketing. 

Using promotions, discounts, and other offers, you can increase sales by pushing products to your target marketing for a specific period.

The Disadvantages of Outbound Marketing

Expensive

Some outbound marketing, like TV and radio commercials, can be costly. As a result, expensive outbound marketing can be inaccessible to many businesses. To get around that, buy ads in smaller markets, specific regions, and during off hours. 

Customer Access Barriers

Outbound marketing is getting harder and harder to do. Ad-blocking services, do-not-call lists, skipping ads, and spam filters can prevent your ads and promotions from being seen. To improve outbound marketing results, create entertaining advertisements that resonate with your target audience. 

Low ROI

Most outbound marketing campaigns are hard to measure, and those that return a low return on investment (ROI). That said, you can improve return on investment by thoroughly researching your target audience and creating engaging outbound marketing campaigns that connect with them. Also, pre- and post-campaign surveys can improve results.  

4 Effective Strategies for Outbound Marketing

1. Set Outbound Marketing Goals

To get the outbound marketing results you want, start with the end goal in mind. Create a realistic but achievable plan. Then, work toward incrementally hitting your goals. Make sure your outbound marketing goals align with your business goals. 

2. Create Effective Outbound Marketing Campaigns

Using demographic information, like zip codes, create outbound marketing campaigns that most likely resonate with your target audience. For instance, a high-end winery should only place billboards in high-income zip codes to ensure the campaign’s effectiveness.

3. Create Outbound marketing KPIs

While outbound marketing is challenging to track, there are ways to improve trackability. If you’ve set a billboard up in a specific area of town or section of freeway, you can create a dedicated 1-800 number or add a particular tracking code. That way, you can attribute calls to that specific billboard. Additionally, you can use inbound marketing tactics like Google’s Click-to-Call button to link a mobile website visit from a display ad to a phone call. 

4. Track Performance

To track the performance of outbound marketing campaigns, you’ll need to think strategically and creatively. The best way to track outbound marketing performance is to use surveys, feedback forms, tracking numbers, and inbound marketing tactics with associated and attributable analytics. 

What’s the Difference Between Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing?

Indirect vs. Direct Marketing

Basically, it’s all in the approach. One uses indirect marketing strategies (inbound marketing), and one uses direct marketing strategies (outbound marketing). When you want to soft-sell prospects and customers, use inbound marketing. 

Short- vs. Long-Buying Cycle

Remember, soft-sell marketing requires nurturing a relationship with the customer, which takes time. On the other hand, outbound marketing, which is more hard-sell marketing, directly markets to customers through a promotion or campaign with a start and end date, creating a sense of urgency. 

Relationship-Centric vs. Sales-Centric Approach

Inbound marketing aims to build long-term relationships with customers by providing valuable content to customers. Outbound marketing is a short-term strategy where the end goal is to push a company’s products to the customer soon after they see the product, promotion, or offer, forcing the customer to make a purchasing decision to buy the product as quickly as possible. 

Types of Buyers and Buyer’s Journey

Inbound marketing can be used for new prospects or customers with limited knowledge of a company’s brand, products, and services. Additionally, inbound marketing can also be used for high-ticket products that require more information to make a purchasing decision. 

Outbound marketing is often used when there’s an established relationship or significant brand recognition. That said, it can also be used to acquire new customers. After all, prospects previously unaware of your products and services can use a promotion or campaign to try your company out. 

Additionally, outbound marketing can upsell, cross-sell, and promote low- and high-ticket products and services. 

Which is more effective: Inbound marketing or outbound marketing?

Well, that really depends on the goal. Suppose you’re looking to build long-term relationships with customers over time while soft-selling prospects, inbound marketing is more effective. 

Additionally, if you have a complex product that requires extensive education, like a series of webinars, eBooks, or whitepapers, inbound marketing works best. 

However, outbound marketing is more effective if you’re looking for quick sales. Also, if you have deadline-driven offers, outbound marketing works best. Outbound marketing is the way to go if you need to generate brand awareness for mass interest in your product, services, or company.

That said, you don’t have to limit yourself to one or the other. Sometimes, using a combination of inbound and outbound marketing works best, especially where performance management and tracking are needed. 

Combine Inbound Marketing with Outbound Marketing for Maximum Effectiveness

Here are some examples of combining inbound and outbound marketing to help achieve your business goals:

1. Direct-Marketing Campaign (Outbound) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) (Inbound)

Creating Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads that drive customers to a dedicated long-form, direct-response sales page with the sole goal of generating immediate sales for a high-ticket product.

2. Trade Show (Outbound) and Dedicated Landing Page with Lead Generation Form (Inbound)

Hosting or attending trade shows, conferences, or networking events significantly increases lead generation. Find creative ways to engage attendees and get their contact information in person or via an event landing page. 

3. Cold Calling/Cold Emailing (Outbound) and Opt-In Email Marketing (Inbound)

Cold calling and cold emailing should have two goals (1) generate business and (2) get leads. Yes, it would be great to generate business on first contact with your prospects, but more often than not, you’ll need to nurture the lead before getting the sale. Once you contact prospective leads, invite them to opt-in to an email newsletter to get exclusive content and deals.  

---

After this deep dive into inbound and outbound marketing, you understand how to use each to your advantage. Still want help with your eCommerce marketing? Leverage our marketing expertise.

Contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation today.